Now that man was legend.
The first time I heard Rush was probably 1992. I was a teenager, and on a long road trip with my dad. There were radio stations we didn’t get at home, and there was some guy talking politics, only it was funny and entertaining. We enjoyed it and talked about those topics the rest of the ride. (Me and my dad bonded over very few things, so that memory kind of hit me hard yesterday).
After I moved to Utah, Rush was on the radio. I remember getting one of his books from the Delta Utah library and reading it on my breaks at the crappy factory job I was working. That’s 29 years I’ve been listening or reading Rush off and on. When I told my wife he’d died, she got choked up. She’d been a fan since she lived in California as a teenager and he’d had a TV show.
There are a lot of haters out there saying vile things today. But they’re idiots with sad pathetic lives looking for validation from their tribe. What would Rush do about their hate? Use them as a teachable moment and then mock them in an amusing way for the audience. There’s a valuable lesson there for all of us.
The man was brilliant and could articulate things in a way that most people simply can’t. He had that gift where he could take the things that many people were feeling but couldn’t put into words, and then give them a voice. That’s a rare talent. Some might even say on loan from God.
Rest in peace, Mr. Limbaugh.
Other talk show hosts seem to be unable to reproduce his impish sense of humor, so they only leave you angry. Rush made it fun to laugh at people with ridiculous and dangerous ideas. I will miss that.
This is quite an important difference. Rush, and to a lesser extent Andrew Breitbart, weren’t mean-spirited about it ..
Runs never really seemed to be trying to goad the other side into anything .. He’d just point out stuff they did or thought that amused him and comment on it.
Laughter matters; laughter may sting, but it’s also – for those of us able to laugh at ourselves – got a built-in healing balm … and it helps us identify those who *cannot* laugh at themselves so we can avoid them and their ideas.
Rush will be missed; in the decades since I drifted out of his radio audience – preferring reading over listening – I’ve found *vanishingly* few people who can invoke laughter instead of anger .. and far too few even seem to try.
Mew
Rush, not mean-spirited? The dude had an AIDS Update segment where he reveled in death.
“…an AIDS Update segment where he reveled in death…”
Yeah? Quote it, hero. I dare you.
Maybe explain what why you would want that first.
Why would I want that first? Because you can’t quote it. 99% probable you have never heard what he said, nor read a transcript.
I’m very interested to hear back -exactly- what Rush said and the context he said it in. But I’ll never hear it from you, because you’re going on third-hand hearsay.
Prove me wrong, tough guy.
30 something years ago before anybody really understood it, and he’s since apologized and even said it was the worst thing he’s ever done in his life and felt awful for it.
And I still despise the LGBTQ members from that era. Their “social justice” was public health murder of women and children who should have never been exposed to HIV had they done a proper quarantine of the infected.
…but these are progs you’re dealing with. They never forgive. Ever.
Which is why they keep bringing things like this up. They need to, since they have to portray folk who disagree with them as the Ultimate Evil so they can hate and seethe at them with wanton abandon.
Which, ironically, makes *them* evil.
Before anyone understood it? The only thing he might not have understand was that it could affect straight people. He was well aware that he was “making fun of people who were dying long, painful and excruciating deaths,” that was the entire point of the segment. Openly so. In truth, as far as he was concerned, the only thing regretful about it was that it stopped being popular and that might affect his bottom line.
He wasn’t sorry for what he’d done. He was sorry it might cost him sponsors.
You say so, guy with mind reading powers.
And when I say nobody understood it, I mean that quite literally, because if you don’t recall people had no idea at first, ranging from people in San Fran stuffing towels under their doors to keep the deadly airborne plague out on one side, while on the other side many people thought it was this disease that only weirdo deviants engaged in really weird stuff could get, and this wasn’t the enlightened today this was the early 1980s. (I lived on the other side of that mountains from SF and most of the people in my little farm town fell into that second category. So did a lot of America. So lots of us heard lots of adults saying the same kind of stupid stuff he said about it).
In every other walk of life, people learn, struggle, and grow, unless you’re a conservative then you’re basically evil forever. 🙂
Misinformation in the early 1980s doesn’t let him off the hook for what he was doing in 1990, a full two years after C. Everett Koop sent Understanding AIDS to every household in America. But that’s kinda beside the point, isn’t it? Even if he remained completely ignorant of the disease, the entire point of the segment was to dance on the graves of its victims.
You don’ t need mind-reading powers to reasonably speculate that a dude who gave a lame apology and went on calling gay people pedophiles for the rest of his life, and continued to spread disinformation about AIDS well into the 2000s, might not have been all that sorry about it. And that’s just one aspect of a career spent hate-mongering.
Point is, Limbaugh *was* mean-spirited, that was a major component of his appeal. He crapped on the outgroup. I mean, you might argue that it was necessary, the left had it coming, whatever you like, but to say he wasn’t mean-spirited, that he wasn’t trying to stir the pot or get a reaction, blatantly ignores decades of his invective.
Have a good one.
Jericho, my dude –
You have not proven your point.
You have not successfully located an episode.
The dead guy *apologized*.
It appears you have failed of accepting the apology.
As the guy is *dead* .. what else do you demand of him?
Or .. are you making demands of *us*?
Because, if so, you’re going to need to be a lot more effective at proving your point.
Return to Go, collect bupkis, try again. Or .. don’t.
Mew
Nah you quote it since you said it happened. Basically you are a liar trying to create a controversy.
Oh, okay. You want me to quote it to prove it happened. I see. You’re taking advantage of the fact that the segment has been memory hole’d 30 years ago to try and say he never actually did it.
Brilliant.
Except you can’t quite cover everything up, can you? That’s the problem with courting controversy: there are ripples, and records you can’t erase, no matter how inconvenient they might be.
And one of those things you can’t erase is that he made it abundantly clear that he aired the segment, it was something he did, and its intention was to stick it to the gays:
“The AIDS update is, as is everything I do, politically oriented and based on my reaction to what I consider to be extremism in the political mainstream by a group of people.”
“So the AIDS update is *meant* to offend them. Damn Right.”
There you go. The AIDS update was something he did. It was intended to be offensive. That’s in his own words.
But here’s the thing that gets me. Mr. Correia and I have a disagreement over the sincerity of Limbaugh’s apology for the segment, and whether it truly reflects his character, and that is something we can agree to disagree about. Mr. Houst upthread doesn’t dispute that the segment either, and asserts that The Gays had it coming.
Meanwhile, you guys, Cat and Phantom, want me to pull up 30 year old transcripts to prove something not even remotely in dispute. Not even by the late Mr. Limbaugh.
After all, if he never aired the segment… why would he ever apologize for it?
Larry remembered it, as posted in this thread
Are you going to post a sample, Jericho, or are you going to keep retconning?
So far, you’re not very persuasive….
Mew
I’m sorry, what am I supposed to be retconning? Please explain what you mean by using that term, because I don’t think it means what you think it means.
Put the goalposts back and post the cite you promised.
Or just run away, that works for me too.
Mew
p.s. “retcon” – “retroactive continuity”, i.e. changing your story. It works in fiction, but not here, where your prior post is, like, **right there* …
Larry remembered it, as posted in this thread
It’s hard to believe not a single one of you understands the one and ONLY one reason why you like Rush so much.
When he spoke or wrote, he did it with the attitude that he was 100% right, and anyone who disagreed with him was 100% wrong. That appealed to you because he was effectively saying anyone who agreed with YOU was 100% right, and people who disagreed with YOU were 100% wrong and had something wrong with them.
Content didn’t matter. Who was actually right didn’t matter. All that mattered was him giving a finger to people disagreeing with him/you.
Personally, I always enjoy when people who are probably dumber than I am blunder in to explain what I’m really thinking and feeling. 😀
Nope. Not even close to the mark.
Hate to disappoint, but I don’t care what you’re thinking, feeling, or even your system of beliefs. Not because it’s unimportant, but but because it isn’t the MOST important thing.
What actually matters is whether you are thinking OR Feeling. Humans are wired to do one or the other at any single point in time. Conservative, Liberal, Crazy, checked-out, doesn’t make any difference. It’s biological.
Think about it, when you get really mad in a discussion, or even an argument, do you (i.e. all humans) take time to think about your responses, or do you just blurt them out?
Your response here is a good example. You perceived (incorrectly btw), that this was an attack on your beliefs. You responded within 5 minutes. Seriously, is that enough time for you to find my post, read what I said, think of specific examples from Rush’s statements, and evaluate the two to see if they match?
Of course not. This was an emotional reaction. Thought-out responses take time. I’m not stupidly saying it’s a bad thing, it’s just how we humans work.
That is also the (very) short version of my reasoning here. You and all of the others here posting in support of Rush all described the same thing: an immediate response to him the moment you first heard him. Immediate responses are emotional. Sometimes also instinctual, in the case of immediate physical danger, but I’m pretty sure that doesn’t apply here.
What you failed to notice is that I didn’t say liking Rush was right or wrong. I was just summarizing the biological reasoning behind the why. I reviewed all the input from everyone here, observed the patterns, and identified the underlying cause.
I’m hoping this time you’ll be able to break out of the immediate emotional urge to rush to respond and actually think about my comments this time. You’ve clearly got the ability, and it could lead to a mutually beneficial discussion. For example, I could share the exact information that brought me to my conclusion.
Fyi, here’s a bit of a mind-blower that might help you break the emotional response urge: I think guns are useful tools and can be awesome (as long as you know which end the bullets come out), defunding the police is arguably the worst idea this century, and communism is doomed to fail in any group larger than about 20 people.
Bait and switch or what?
Maybe your initial statement which was framed as you being 100% right about what everyone else thought, exactly, wasn’t as nuanced or insightful as you imagine it was.
So you said something stupid and insulting, and the fact that I responded immediately is proof that I should have taken more time to consider the stupid and insulting thing that you said?
Heh… On the contrary. Sometimes bullshit is just bullshit, no matter how fluffy you try to make it, and there’s no reason to waste time with semantic games.
Now to really fuck up your argument, I check the blog comments maybe once or twice a day. So you getting a response 5 minutes after you posted was luck of the draw, nothing more. And I didn’t give that vapid bullshit 5 minutes, I gave it 30 seconds before I responded, which is more than it deserved.
As for your ridiculous argument, which you have since taken the time to actually write out this time in greater depth, it is still stupid, because:
A. If your premise was correct, Sean Hannity would be far more popular than Rush.
B. I discovered lots of things I liked when I was 16 because they agreed with me at the time, that I didn’t remain a fan of for the next 30 years.
As for the “emotional response urge”, snort. 😀 Bullshit, and you ain’t Mr. Spock. Your initial argument was an emotional one based on the premise that millions of people with a different take than you were all easily bamboozled suckers without critical thinking skills. And since I get paid millions of dollars because I’m super good at character analysis enough to create convincing imaginary people with plausible internal monologues and consistent internal belief systems, I know you’re full of shit.
Now drop it. Because your pseudo-intellectual gibberish is tiresome.
“Hate to disappoint but …in any group larger than about 20 people.”
Like. Dude. Bogart.
If you’re going to like, ramble on, pass that bong around. Solving world hunger would be like super easy. Like, I’m surprised no one else has like… thought of this before.
We should be recording all this.
Perhaps for your next response, try the defense of “But I have black friends.”
I particularly like the “I don’t care what you think” line while posting screeds on someone else’s blog.
It’s a great way to foreshadow an incoherent rant.
Well done!
Anyone want to bet that Corny is parroting someone else’s hot take?
The only thing I find interesting about him is his need to barge into a wake and harass the mourners. He’s getting off on it. Probably just another attention whore.
Agree, too wordy, here’s sequential TL;DR:
1. You all wrote thought/discussion about Rush’s content came AFTER you liked Rush
2. As thought came second, content CANNOT be basis for why you like him, HAD to be emotional
3. Rush’s constant go-to move is mocking ideas/people he disagrees with (i.e. Michael J. Fox faked Parkinson’s, anyone supporting birth control is a slut, etc…)
4. You all wrote here that you oppose the same things as Rush {Liberals, gun control, etc…)
5. THEREFORE, as you responded to him emotionally, the emotions followed his attacks on things you also dislike, you like him because he attacks things you dislike
Also worth noting that your response to this purely observational statement were emotionally charged unproved attacks (name calling, bad logic), attempts to shift topics (Hannity, Spock), and finally openly asking me to not talk about it. All of these are extreme fear-based responses.
If someone wants to discuss a point with you calmly and objectively and your response is fearfully lashing out, the obstacle is NOT from them.
Too wordy? Too emotional?
Says the dude who takes weeks to formulate a reply on a month old blog post. 😀
All your numbered points are straw grasping gibberish and there’s not enough audience left to waste the time refuting them.
Find a new hobby. Preferably one that doesn’t involve wasting my time.
You just keep telling yourself that, home slice.
De Nile is a nice warm river to swim in….
Mew
And here I thought that I found it entertaining and engaging, even when I disagreed with ~10-20% of what he said.
Glad you cleared that up for me. Especially impressive that you could figure it out for all 43 million people who listened.
It was a pretty impressive bit of mind reading, wasn’t it?
One could change “Rush Limbaugh” to “Jon Stewart”, and the statement would be more accurate.
I did not listen to Rush, but my mom did. I can think of two things:
1. Remember Clinton in Kosovo? This was the very early days of the Blogosphere, and I was reading Talking Points Memo (pre-BDS), and he said, roughly, Rush Limbaugh will lie to you, try to scare you that Clinton is going to put boots on the ground, don’t let him do that. This is an air campaign only.
And I had just heard Rush at my mom’s one or two days ago, saying, “Now, don’t be concerned if you hear boots are going on the ground. This will probably stay an air campaign, but some targets might need ground troops to crack. This is the military that cracked the 4th largest military in the world, okay?”
And so I wrote to the email address on TPM, saying, hey, I just heard Rush talking about not worrying about boots on the ground,” and TPM responded with, “Oh, well, he’s lied about so many other things this won’t matter!”
Talk about an eye-opener.
2. Rush was a compelling speaker. If you every listened to him in his prime, he used classic short story format to great effect: he would Introduce a subject, as if hunting around for material, then he would Build on that material, and driving it to a Climactic point (usually based on a general principle, like Don’t Let The Government Run Your Life, and then usually make a crack as Denouement before smoothly transitioning to a commercial.
And he did it almost flawlessly, over and over again.
He was amazing.
We used to listen to him in the office, he evolved into a pretty good policy wonk, but he DID do his research. He is solely responsible for bringing back talk radio and giving conservatives an outlet. He will be sorely missed. RIP Rush Limbaugh, RIP.
I used to meet lunch appointments in “RUSH ROOMS” do you remember those. ????
Requiescant in Pace Rush!
Yes, I do. One of the local steak places here had a Rush Room that allowed cigar smoking. I thought it was great, even though I don’t smoke.
Talent returned to God.
Very true. That’s true for all of us.
Amen. The modern conservative movement, everybody from Breitbart to Michelle Malkin to Mark Levin to Mark Steyn and everyone else, all of them live in the house that he built.
I will always remember when I first started listening to him in the early 90’s. After that I just couldn’t listen to regular radio. I was hooked on political talk radio. But the way he did it was so different from the others. He was smart yes, and always knew what he was talking about. But there are others that do that. He was also entertaining. In a way that so many weren’t. Even to this day.
RIP Rush. He truly had an impact that will not be duplicated.
Rush wasn’t a political pundit that someone sat down in front of a microphone; he was a radio guy who spent a long time perfecting his craft before he started his show. As you say, he was entertaining. He figured out how to make a good show, then added the message, rather than starting with the message and trying to build a show around it.
Hmm, you know, that last piece of advice sounds kind of familiar. I feel like I’ve heard it somewhere, but I can’t quite remember where…
The problem with talent on loan from God is that eventually you have to give it back. RIP and Mega Dittos, Rush. Those of us still here will continue fighting the good fight.
Fan since 1989. I feel like I have lost a dear friend.
Same here, for about as long. Cheers –
I’m going to miss him a lot.
When he had his TV show I would tape it and watch it while I rode the exercise bike. Those shows were really good.
Perfect testimonial.
I started listening in ’87 (at least I think it was 87, he said his show started nationally in 89, all I know is one day there was one talk show on at noon and the next was this new guy).
Damn he was funny. Expectantly waited for every Gorbasm, Kennedy update song, Caller abortion and all the others.
Listened to it so much at work one of the people in the office took a New Yorker cartoon which showed a guy in psychotherapy tell his analyst “I hear Rush Limbaugh when the radio isn’t on.” and doctored it up to look like me then posted it in my cube. Still have it.
When we move to Riyadh for a job I couldn’t quite get the AFRTS radio station from Damman or Eskan Village compound (never was sure where their transmitter was) so ran a wire out the kitchen fan window and up over the rooftop to get a better antenna, then listened happily to one hour a day they broadcast his show.
He changed this world and left if better.
The influence he had on me was incredible and I will explain what I am talking about. When I got out of the service I had this belief that I was alone and that nobody else believed like I did and my belief structure was “Weird”. Well one day after I took a job with a commercial courier company in Atlanta after I was done with Pizza Manager and being a security guard. The name of the company was “Direct Express” they were a subsidiary of “Southeastern Freight”. I had high hopes for the company but I realized that after a while that the company wasn’t going to grow any bigger than it was so any chance of my moving up as a driver was pretty nil. Don’t get me wrong, it was a good company to drive for but there was no long term future but I digress. Well anyway I was riding with the senior driver and he was listening to the Local talk show guy named “Boortz,” then to Rush, he went from AM750 to AM 640 in the afternoon and I was mesmerized, I heard people on the radio that sounded like “me.”….do you realize what that sounded like in the early mid 90’s what it sounded like to realize that you were not alone? So while I was doing my courier stuff, I would tune into Neal Boortz in the Morning and Rush in the Afternoon. After Hillarycare went down in flames after the 1994 Mid term election, Neal Boortz hosted a “Shred” party at the radio station and I drove my courier van off my route to go by there and got a mug and a sandwich bag with a shredded page of the defunct bill, It was glorious!
I than continued my route and switched over to Rush in the afternoon and that was my routine until I got hired by Ford Motor Company to build cars. I got paid a lot more money at Ford and the future prospects were much better since I was getting married. I did miss the daily talk radio, I couldn’t get it in the plant because of the noise but when I was off, I would still tune in and listen. Listening to them enabled me to formulate my thoughts and debate people much more effectively.
Rush was a huge influence in my life as in many others, he showed us that we were not alone, and for that alone, I am forever grateful to him.
I never really listened to his show but I was always impressed at the impact he had on the media. And of course it was funny watching the people who hate him so much try to actually articulate why they disliked him.
So many memories. I first hear Rush when the station my mother listened to switch over talk radio format in the late 80s. From that time on Rush’s show was a daily part of my memories of mom. When I started deploying in the Navy my mom subscribed me to Rush’s newsletter. By the early 2000s I started listening occasionally to his show. After I retired from the Navy, Rush became a daily part of my life.
It hurts having that whole where Rush once stood, but as has been said so many times already, talent returned to God.
As a Reagan conservative in Los Angeles, Rush gave me hope and a voice that didn’t exist for me in the Clinton era.
and, OMG, he had some of the best parody songs out there!!
He saved a dying AM radio and gave a voice to conservatives that had already been shut out of “mainstream media”.
Bless him, he’s gone home, but may his legacy go on.
Rush saved me from the meaningless life of a progressive. Although a Reagan fan in my youth and having attended a conservative leaning university I was starting to believe the stupid media lies especially with regards to the environment how we were ruining the earth and wasting its resources. Then there was this guy on the radio who said something audacious, “there are actually more trees in the US today than there were before the pilgrims.” (I can’t remember exactly how he put it.) That kind of ‘radical’ thinking got me hooked. Been a fan ever since. Along the way I learned he was an Apple products fan like me and even made a connection to one of his tech advisers. We used to text back and forth on iPhone release days since we were both frantically trying to get the greatest and latest for our respective bosses.
In the late 80’s during my first career job after college, I was talking casually with a co-worker during a lunch break about society, culture and politics. Suddenly a light bulb went off for him during our exchange, prompting him to say to me that there was a guy on AM radio with a talk show that sounded exactly like I did, practically the same viewpoint on Government and the Constitution.
Afterwards, I looked up the radio station and began listening to Rush, and found a national voice that echoed my own thoughts. Only far more humorous and entertaining, of course. His takes was nearly always the same as mine own, which added vindication to my own convictions in life.
I am going to miss that voice, his words, wit and wisdom.
God bless you, Rush.
My younger brother told me there was someone on the radio that actually said the things we thought, and entertained while doing it. His was a voice unsurpassed.
Good to remember when Clinton’s garbage was being pushed on CNN… or as Rush called it :
the CLINTON NEWS NETWORK…
it was edifying being a DITTO HEAD.
He will be missed………
Requiescant in Pace Rush. ????????
I think that was his greatest gift. He went out to millions of our fellow countrymen who felt alone and uncertain and told them: “you’re not wrong, this is not the way it’s supposed to be, and you aren’t the only one who sees it for what it is”
I remember my know it all skull full of mush self basically telling my mom that he was a “bigot, racist, homophobe”TM about 25 years ago. She called me an idiot and told me I should actually listen to him. When I finally did I fell in love with the way he got his point across.
He will be missed.
Rush Limbaugh differed from so many other talking heads and radio pundits is that he not only used humor (and sarcasm) to skewer opponents but he didn’t take himself too seriously. He was capable of poking fun at himself and the stereotypes other tried to pigeonhole him into. This Pizza Hut commercial of his is still one of the funniest ads I have ever seen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fu7yDm9loXk
He will be missed not only for his knowledge and understanding but his humor and ability to reach across the aisle. Chrissie Hynds of the Pretenders had totally opposite politics from his, but because both had a love of animals and contributed to shelters for abused pets, she let him the musical theme from ‘My City was Gone’ for his radio show.
There was lot more to him than the one-dimensional parody his bitter enemies liked to portray him as.
Like you, my introduction to El Rushbo was in my father’s car. Also like you, my father and I didn’t have a lot in common. I didn’t share his interest in sports or cars, but we agreed on politics (and religion), so our devotion to the Maha Rushie was a part of what kept us together.
Even though Dad’s on the other side of the continent, I texted him when I got the news of Rush’s passing. We talked about memories, and the good man that we just lost.
And just imagine what Rush could have accomplished if he hadn’t had half his brain tied behind his back, just to make it fair.
One of the things I like is that most of the journalists who hate him never seemed to realize how much they were responsible for his getting so big: if people had trusted them to give unbiased coverage to news, he’d probably have been happily sportscasting somewhere.
And he not only gave voice to people, he helped them to laugh at the politicians and journalists involved. THAT they can never forgive.
He was one of the best examples of a happy warrior that I’ve ever seen.
I found Rush when his TV show was on the air. The first episode I saw was the one about cell phones causing cancer and he spent the entire show with one strapped to his head.
I bought his books at the college bookstore, and from then on listened to his show (an hour time shifted in my city) whenever I could.
I still self-identify as an “Uglo-American” when the PC gets too thick.
I met him before he started doing radio in KC in the 80’s, when he helped my church get nosebleed tickets to the Royals. Still the only pro game I’ve ever been to.
I will miss him for his humor and insight.
Well said. Thank you.
Never really listened to Rush. Of course I knew of him, and read some excerpts of his stuff. From what little I knew of him I could tell he was probably the most politically intuitive and insightful pundits out there. No idea why I never got around to listening to him more.
I’m gonna miss him just knowing he’s no longer there.
I’m going to admit something. I was never a great fan. I caught him in a few whoppers over the years, which I didn’t appreciate. However, and this is a big however, I respected the fact that he amused and informed people in ways that were important. Even when I didn’t agree, the subjects that he raised were important and deserving of thought.
RIP.
Fox News was all about a tribute to him Wed night from 4/7 onward and so many clips and personal stories made me cry. So many people that knew they wouldn’t be where they are today without the foundation Rush built.
You hear stories about people that defy stage 4 cancer and it feels like Rush would’ve been one of those to stay indefinitely.
The Southern CA station played him live, so his voice woke me 5 days a week during summers my mother wasn’t teaching. Grateful to have him during the Clinton years.
Listened to Rush since 1991. I’m going to miss that part of my day. He made my work day seem lighter.
I started listening to Rush in about 1993/4 at the Arms Chest gun shop in Westchester county NY. I was freshly transplanted from Canada, going to school in the county and hanging out in the gun shop after classes just because I could.
Listening to Rush Limbaugh say out loud stuff I’d only thought about privately was… essentially indescribable, really. Like a cosmic shift in the world. Here was this guy yelling into the microphone and crumpling his papers, saying all the stuff I thought I wasn’t allowed to talk about. And he kept going! Carrying on through circumstances that would have tested a saint, until he died in the saddle.
So may God bless Rush and let him rest in peace.
“Some might even say on loan from God.” I had been sad but stoic thus far, but I read that line in his voice and it broke me. And I am unashamed.
Rush did have talent on loan from God. I joke sometimes and others sometimes agree..that I have a unique way with the english language and a talent for invective that makes some people wince. Rush? Rush was on a whole different level. I didn’t always agree with him but one of his ‘talents’ was the ability to predict with 99% accuracy what hte left was going to do or say in any given scenario. He also had a talent for beating them upside the head with their own hyperbole.
I first started listening to Rush in 1995 while in Japan. He was on AFRN then. I was a regular listener for years, but stopped in March 2011. He made some flippant and, I felt, mean-spirited remarks about Japan right after the disastrous earthquake and tsunami—this while I was unsure of the welfare of friends and family. He was all the things he is being eulogized for, but he also went too far on occasion and, sadly left me behind when he did.
He was definitely not a teacher, he was a performer. In all the ways that matter, he’s exactly the same as the leftist ‘woke’ assholes on social media who claim everything is racist because they know their audience will lap it up.
He knew that celebrating AIDS deaths would play well with the religious right because in the 80s they saw it as a plague that would cleanse the Earth of ‘sinful’ gays. He only apologized once people realized that not only gay people were dying of AIDS.
He knew that his audience in 2012 wanted to hear that an advocate for contraceptives wasn’t arguing for equal access to health care that would reduce the number of abortions, she obviously just wanted sex bad enough to testify in front of congress so she wouldn’t have to buy condoms.
He would have done equally well as one of the woke crowd today, yelling dumb shit about cultural appropriation. Some of them are eloquent and give people a voice too, but like Rush, the things they say with that voice are asinine.
Indeed. Rush Limbaugh was a highly skilled media opportunist who exploited a particular swathe of opinions. Just as there are political opportunists who do exactly the same thing regardless of whether they address left, right or centre and there are marketing opportunists who sell us tat and lifestyles we can’t really afford and have no need for.
We need to become smarter and recognize all manner of grifters who get rich at our expense for what they are.
Amen, Dave L. (Silent sob)
Incidentally, here’s MY story about how I was introduced to Rush. I was working at a fast food place right after high school. There was a new coworker who introduced us to him after hours one night. This individual bragged about being Klan, and would make n*gger jokes after black customers came in. Anyway, he starts playing his own “greatest hits” collection from Rush. It included inspiring quotes like “Yes Massa!”, slavery lasted so long because it was a good thing, MLK’s killer deserved a medal, black football players are all gang members, etc…
He laughed and said “Damn! This man hates n*ggers more’n ME!”. He was right.
Larry, I just thought of a 5-second test you can take to see for yourself if this is right. Take every reference you can think of where Rush talked about black people, and replace “black” with “Mormon”. Would you still like him just as much then?
Lol. Like nobody has ever said incorrect or shitty things about Mormons EVER. 😀
EDIT to add: Whoops! I didn’t answer that stupid fucking question. And to avoid the inevitable weaseling that will occur from my brilliant and totally honest commenter about how I avoided it, yes. Duh.
Difference is I’m used to people screwing up everything about my beliefs or saying dumb shit, so I don’t get butt hurt. (plus, unlike Cornbread, who apparently heard all of these alleged quotes from his totally not imaginary KKK coworker, I understand what the word context means).
Cornbread probably has a 5 year old that makes insightful political commentary, too.
I’m also going to venture that he chose “Cornbread” as some kind of pseudo-hipster attempt to “blend in” with the Deplorable hicks supposed to be found on this page.
You “don’t get butt hurt”? Have you read your own blog? It’s at least 50% butthurt whining. I’m surprised your hands don’t have permanent indentations from how often and hard you clutch your pearls.
Even when I agree with the point of one of your posts, you still come off like a touchy middle-school kid.
I write stuff that’s really popular so lots of people read it. But J. Rando Fuckface here doesn’t approve. 😀
Oh no! However will I live?
I must however note, that upon checking this morning there are several first time posters with obvious fake names all lodged in my comment moderation for this month old blog post, all with the same basic narrative about how I’m an uncaring whiner.
You fuckers are SMOOOOOTH. 🙂
It is a bit hard to see how anyone could screw up or misunderstand your beliefs. They’re about as basic as it gets. You care about things that do affect you or might affect you. Anything else is unimportant.
It’s why when a police officer guarding our nation’s capitol is beaten to death during an attempted coup, your main concern was that the app the attackers used to coordinate was dumped by its hosting companies.
How fucking stupid do you have to be to still believe that retracted bullshit about that cop being beaten to death during Moronic Selfie Day at the capitol?
Your tech overlords would cancel you for posting gross misinformation, but Larry allows your public displays of ignorance to stand.
You should thank him.
WALLYYYYYYIIIEEEEEE!
That never happened. You are repeating a lie.
So the question you need to answer now is who are you mad at? The people who lied to you? They lied to you, over and over, while slapping “fact checks” on your ideological opponents. You’ve been scammed. You’ve been had. You’ve been suckered.
So, now that you know (and knowing is half the battle) what is your response and plan going forward?
Uh huh. Bullshit.
Decades of talking, you take a few bits out of context, filter them through some KKK guy (who is probably imaginary btw) ergo, that dude is SUPER RACIST.
Take it up with Bo Snerdly.
EDIT to add: And then everyone on the bus clapped.
I really like the part where this random KKK dipshit was able to go through a live radio show (unless Cornbread graduated high school post internet archives) and make a record of these “greatest hits” to play for his coworker (as KKK dudes are known to do… and you sat there an let this racist fuckface get away with that, which demonstrates that you are truly a man of conviction). AND these clips are exactly as described by Mr. Ultra Reliable here (even though the regular media has been gunning for this dude for decades so we know exactly what quotes he’s talking about and what the actual context was).
Yep. That sounds totally realistic. Don’t worry. In a week or two when even fewer people will read the comments he’ll be back to offer more hot takes.
But, by laughing at this obvious bullshit and pseudo-psycho babble hot take, so when I tell him to fuck off and quit wasting my time I’m obviously “emotional” and driven by fear. 😀
Next, he’ll make up a story where a Child Wise Beyond Their Years says something Oh So Profound.
Dang it.
I’m slow.
LOL!
So basically, Cornbread, you’re saying that he tried to court you with a mix tape? Weird!
A mix tape? Mensch, that is so mid-twentieth 20th century, who remembers that shit without being embarrased?
Embarrassment would be thinking mix tapes were a thing in the mid 20th century.
Looks like you’re 2 for 2 on stupid takes on this thread.
So it was such a burn you had to use twentieth twice? HA!
I have another question for you John. Does your online name mean you pay yourself $20 or do you just stiff yourself every time after a disappointing session of self-abuse?
Dead horse and all, but chalk it up to morbid curiosity. Ive been reading your books, and they’re great. I decided to look up who you were and arrived down this particular rabbit hole.
You’re clearly intelligent and articulate, and appear to be a decent sort, both through your writing and your interviews, not that you need my approval – I’m just trying to show that I’m not hostile, and that I’m missing something that’s causing me cognitive dissonance.
I’m not familiar with Mr. Limbaugh’s work, though I had heard of him. I come from a scientifically inclined family who don’t pay much attention to national politics. Anyway, I looked up his wiki page, and actually went through the citations to ensure it wasn’t a smear job, and I have to say they paint a pretty damning picture of him.
My question is this, while we are all flawed beings, he appears to have used his platform to repeatedly and verifiably spread misinformation. This was clearly deliberate, especially the most recent regarding COVID-19 being the common cold – something that directly endangers people who believed in him. How do you reconcile these repeated choices with your affection and admiration for him?
So… You claim to be “scientific” but your judgement about a controversial political figure (who you admit you have zero first hand experience with) is based upon reading his Wikipedia article? (Wikipedia, which anybody can edit, which studies have shown can be very accurate, except for politically charged topics where it becomes extremely inaccurate, a fact so glaring in its bias that even one of the founders of Wikipedia has been railing about it for the last couple of years)
And I… who you say sound like an intelligent and decent sort, who does have first hand experience with said subject, now needs to apologize for how I feel about that man’s death, because it differs from your Wikipedia based hot take?
No, I don’t need to reconcile shit to you. 🙂
No worries. Have a good day.
Thanks for taking the time to answer. Have a good day!
If you knew anything about my background/history with Wikipedia you’d realize that this request for reconciliation is extra stupid and galling.
I had a pretty normal Wiki page for a writer, until the day I pissed off a bunch of Caring Liberals by meddling in their sainted awards ceremony, and then it got constantly edited to say what a racist, sexist, misogynistic, white supremacist, hate monger of hatey-hate-hate I was. All charges which were clearly bullshit, but there they were, on Wikipedia.
It’s mostly cleaned up now since they’ve moved on to hating other people.
As for the “sources” same damned thing. I got slandered in Entertainment Weekly, IO9, and the Guardian. Again, all politically motivated bullshit. No facts, just lies, twisting, the Brits even used scare quotes of what I *might* say (but they conveniently left that part out, so it just looked like they were quoting me)
And they do all this so the ignorant and emotional are easily swayed. “I saw on Wikipedia/News he is bad! So how do you reconcile reading Larry Correia novels? You aren’t a bad person too are you!?!”
Only Rush Limbaugh was several orders of magnitude more famous/controversial than I’ve ever been.
So quit being such a useful idiot sucker (or a liar, could go either way, this is the internet after all)